Free The Nutmeg Tree by Margery Sharp

no more than the round table with its white cloth. She had no real business there, but she was hungry and wanted to see how lunch was getting on. The sight of cutlery and glass, laid for three, encouraged her, and so did the carafe of wine. She wouldn’t have said “No” to a cocktail, but the opportunity, if Barton habits still prevailed, was not likely to arise.
    â€œI must just learn to do without them,” thought Julia, as she returned to the seats under the lime tree. “They’re rotten for the complexion, and it’s a bad example for Susan. Besides, anyone who knows about wine says they’re absolute muck.… If I could have one, I’d have a Manhattan.”
    With an effort she wrenched her thoughts away and directed them to the surprising metamorphosis of Mrs. Packett. The old lady’s vigour had made a deep impression on her. “She wasn’t like that at Barton,” reflected Julia, wondering. “If she’d wanted me to start a cake-shop then, I might have done it.” Or had Mrs. Packett even then hankered after commercial enterprise, and had she, Julia, been too much wrapped up in her own misery, too unresponsive to all outside impressions, to notice? Julia thought not. It seemed to her more likely that her mother-in-law was of the type, not rare among Englishwomen, in whom full individuality blossoms only with age: one of those who, at sixty-one, suddenly startle their relatives by going up in aeroplanes or by marrying their chauffeurs.…
    â€œWell?” said the voice of Susan. “How do you think Grandmother is looking?”
    â€œSplendid,” said Julia promptly. “Has she been up in an aeroplane?”
    Susan looked surprised: “No, she hasn’t. But she did talk—how odd!—of flying to Paris. I thought it might be too much for her.”
    â€œYou’ll have a job to stop her flying back,” prophesied Julia, tucking in her feet so that Susan could pass to the second chair. But Susan did not move. She hadn’t come out to talk about her grandmother.
    â€œLunch is just ready,” she said. “And—he’s here.”
    Julia preceded her into the dining-room and saw a young man, deeply sunburnt, who greeted her with a cheerful smile. He wore a blue shirt, tan-coloured trousers, and sandalettes which had once been white.
    2
    â€œThis is Bryan Relton—my mother,” said Susan from the doorway.
    His smile broadened to a grin.
    â€œBonjour, Madame!”
    â€œWell, I’m damned!” thought Julia. But there was no time to marvel. Her surprise had been patent, but she made a good come-back.
    â€œBonjour, mon homme,” said Julia blandly. “We’ve met before, Susan, and I thought he was the gardener.”
    Susan joined in their laughter, but she was not quite pleased. Bryan was her property, her surprise: she was like a child who has hidden a puppy in the tool-shed, and then finds it gambolling with the grown-ups. The grown-ups couldn’t help it, but it was tactless of the puppy to get out.…
    â€œIt’s those clothes,” she said, with a humorous lift of the eyebrows.
    â€œPractical, cheap, and picturesque,” retorted the young man. “Don’t they suit the landscape better, Mrs. Packett, than a gent’s summer suiting?”
    â€œVery much better indeed,” said Julia. “And if you think you’re going to make a fool of me,” she added mentally, “you’ll have to think again.”
    They sat down and ate home-grown hors d’œuvres—eggs and radishes, chopped onion, beans in a vinaigrette sauce. The food was excellent, the meal proceeded pleasantly; Susan described the beauties of the neighbourhood, Julia (with expurgation) the incidents of her voyage. The lacunae were necessarily so great that there was practically nothing left to her save the state of the Channel, the emptiness of the Paris train, and the